


Candy Shop, Catalogue One: Approval Arc

by FabFuta1234



Series: Candy Shop [1]
Category: Candy Shop (Roninsong)
Genre: Autistic Character, F/F, F/M, Foot Fetish, Futanari, Giving continuity to a bunch of porn games, Polyamory, Shapeshifting Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23543665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabFuta1234/pseuds/FabFuta1234
Summary: Inspired by Roninsong’s game series of the same name.Andrew Mills was an average guy who liked two things: nanotechnology and sugary foods. His new job at Bo Peep Candy Co. lets him combine both by testing erotic candies brought to life with nanomites. With the help of the eccentric Dr. Celia Lotus and her down-to-earth assistant Talika Reddy, Andy will find love and in doing so will help others feel loved too.In the Approval Arc, Andy's just been hired by BPCC to test the Candy Girls. Problem is, some of the test droids aren't too keen on him. Can Andy show them that he means no harm?
Relationships: Candy Polycule - Relationship
Series: Candy Shop [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694329
Kudos: 1





	1. The Coco-butt Nut

_September 14, 2023. Somewhere on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania._

I gently opened the door. “H-hello?”

“Name, please?” asked the security guard at the desk. He was a massive man with a squared-off jaw and short brown hair.

“Andrew Mills.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Sex, gender, and attraction?”

“Male, boy, and girls. I don’t care if the girl’s cis, trans, or intersex, just give me boobs and I’m good.”

“Fetishes?”

“Feet, asses, lips, and boobs. Dude, why are you even asking me this stuff? It’s kinda...private.”

“Just making sure we’ve got the right guy,” the man gruffed. “The name’s Jeff, don’t wear it out. I take it you’re the new assistant?”

“Yep, that’s me. I heard there was an opening at my favorite candy company involving nanotechnology and I wanted in.”

“Suit yourself. Keep going straight ahead and you’ll find the elevator. The lab is in the second basement.”

“Alright. Thank you!” I trotted off, ignoring his grumbling. Being at the forefront of the most advanced nanotechnology in the world was exciting! How it related to candy escaped me.

I thought about my life up until now. I’d been a fairly average if level-headed guy growing up. I’d always had a great love for candy, though. The bright colors and intricate shapes...hard to believe all of that variety came almost entirely from just one chemical compound. Tasted great, too; given sufficient funding I could clear out a drugstore’s candy aisle in less than an hour without ill effect. No cavities, diabetes, obesity, or even a simple stomachache!

Of course, it wasn’t that I liked ALL candy. I didn’t care too much for chocolate, finding that it had this weird flavor that inevitably sent me gagging. Peanuts, too. But there was enough of the sweet stuff that I could tuck into something good no problemo. It extended to regular food, too; I’d won fifteen eating contests by practical _landslides_.

I also liked robotics, especially the psychological aspects. Imagine making a whole new species with a mind like yours, but at the same time NOT like yours, and then teaching that thing how to live alongside you! When I got out of college and learned that I could put both of my interests together, I quit my job at the post office and signed up for this one. A tester was needed, and a tester they would get.

Dr. Celia Lotus was the scientist in charge of the new program. She was young, only two years my senior, but by the time she was nineteen she’d already figured out how to make robots intelligent _and_ completely self-aware. I couldn’t wait to find out what she could do.

* * *

Once inside the elevator, I pressed the button marked –2 and waited until it stopped moving. When the doors opened, I was greeted with a view of a pristine white hallway. At the end far to my left were two gray doors. I exited the elevator and the doors shut behind me.

“Ah! Mr. Mills, I presume?” I turned to my right to see a burly man of European descent wearing a pink wig with two curls on each side: Beauregard Peep, the CEO & Founder of Bo Peep Candy Co. He’d created the company in 1997 to pay homage to his family, all of whom were artists known for using bright colors in their work. And for being downright perverted, they were also known for that.

“Mr. Peep! So honored to be working with you!” I beamed. “So what’s my job gonna be like? Taste-testing exotic gummy candies?”

Mr. Peep laughed. “You _will_ be taste-testing, yes. But your _main_ job will be testing something else. Mr. Mills, I made this company to share my love of bright colors with the outside world. But there are many others who are only in it for the money, yet _they’re_ the ones making quick cash! Forget feeding people with quality and love, they only want people fat and complacent!”

Yeah, _definitely_ an artistic type. “So what’re you gonna do about that?”

“Why, I’m going to make them _work_ for their supper. Or dessert, as the case may be. These products will be crafted with quality and are designed to spread love! AND burn some calories, too!” He smiled wryly. “Do you know what erotic candies are?”

My jaw dropped. “Is THAT why Jeff asked me about my sexuality?”

“No, that was because we have an Andrew Mills in accounting who’s an aromantic asexual and we wanted to be sure that we could tell you two apart.”

“Oh.”

“You know how much we Peeps love, well, love. So I decided to tap into that to make pornographic pastries like nothing the world has ever seen. A form that traps the delicate beauty of the female form in an edible container.” He laughed. “Dr. Lotus can tell you more about the specifics of the whole operation.”

“Dude, how many times do I gotta tell you to call me Celia?!” The woman herself bound into view, having come from the room at the end of the hall. She was about six inches taller than me and had bright red and _extremely_ messy hair with yellow highlights. Her eyes were lime candy green and her limbs were long and limber. She was kinda cute, to be honest with you.

“Sorry, Celia. Just prepping the new hire. I’ll be in my office on the third floor if you need me, Mr. Mills.” Mr. Peep got on the elevator and left.

Celia looked me over. “Hm...how strong are you?”

“Well, I moved boxes of various dimensions for four years, so I guess I’d say...sort of?”

“Can I touch your dick?”

“Wait, WHAT?!”

“Dude, you’re testing the erotic candies! You’re going to be testing them by _fucking_ them. Gotta make sure your peen is average enough so I can work out reasonable vagina sizes for the girls.”

I sighed. “Fine, go ahead.” She beamed and quickly shoved her hand into my pants, her peach-painted fingernails lightly grazing my dick. I tried not to get hard, even _if_ this was the first time a girl had ever wanted to do something like that to me.

“Hm...hm... _very_ nice, Andy. I’d say you’re about six, seven inches long when fully erect, uncircumsized, and you shave down there, is that right?”

“Uh...y-yeah, I’m six-and-three-quarters…” I stammered, stunned by her level of detail. “I’m...also kinda paranoid about getting lice…”

“Well, _good!_ Cleanup will be a lot easier if you shave your crotch. I’m gonna recommend the brand _I_ use because it’s _really_ thorough.”

“O...kay? Listen, Celia, why are we doing this?”

“Didn’t I just tell you? To measure your penis.”

“I meant the part about the erotic candy stuff. How...how does this matter to you?”

“Well, _I’m_ doing this because the guys and girls I liked in highschool didn’t like me back because they thought I was weird.”

“You ARE weird.”

“Doesn’t mean that people have to be jerks about it! So I decided I’d make robots specifically designed for one-use loving so people wouldn’t have to be lonely like I was. And when Mr. Peep called me up and said he wanted me to use my work specifically to make living candy...” She laughed. “How could I say no?”

“Wait, living?”

“To the lab!” She turned around and took off, and I had to run to keep up with her. Sheesh, what was _with_ this girl?! She entered the room at the end of the hall, and I followed her inside. Behind the double doors was a light gray room filled with computer terminals. Inside a glass case in the room’s center was a pile of sugar cubes about the size of a small squash. One wall featured a large window facing a room completely decked in pink with a black & white checked floor, a large pink heart-shaped bed in the middle of the room beyond and the walls completely padded. This room was connected to the lab with a heavy-looking black wooden door.

Monitoring one of the computers was a short, muscular Indian girl wearing only a black bra, black panties adorned with a purple dildo, a yellow bandanna and matching boots. “Talika Reddy, my assistant and fuck buddy,” Celia beamed. “Tal, this is Andy Mills, the new guy.”

“Uh...how old are you?” I asked. “I wanna make sure you’re of age…”

“Twenty-four,” she replied; the average of mine and Celia’s ages, then. She had a stern and curt demeanor, but given that she was apparently in a relationship with Celia that demeanor only went so far. “I don’t blame you for asking, more people should do that. Would you like to know what you’re going to be doing?”

“Having sex with girls made out of candy, I’m well aware.”

“Ah, but do you know how we bring them to _life_?” Talika asked, raising an eyebrow wryly.

“Is this where the nanobots come in?”

“We call them nanomites here, but yes,” she nodded. She opened a filing cabinet and took out a test tube filled with gray dust. “Behold, the Lotus Nanomites. When introduced to the desired organic matrix, they restructure it into the programmed shape. Observe.”

She uncapped the tube and plugged it into a circular socket underneath the glass case, then pressed a green button next to the socket marked CONFIGURE. To my astonishment the dust entered the case and formed a fog around the sugar cubes. When the fog lifted, the sugar had taken the shape of a cartoonish white lab rat. A rat that was moving, and sniffing, and blinking at me with its huge brown eyes.

“Wow…” I breathed. “Wait, won’t eating it...kill it?”

“Nope!” Celia replied. “When the bot feels enough pleasure the nanomites release their form and turn the shell back into regular, inanimate candy completely fit for human consumption. The nanomites making up the internal skeleton go dormant and we recycle them for another robot.” She removed the glass case and scratched the rat in a very particular spot. After a few minutes of playing with it, it squeaked and went foggy again. Celia put it back on the pedestal and when the fog lifted the rat was a pile of sugarcubes once more. The dust went back into its tube, which Talika capped and put back into its drawer. “See? Cool, innit?”

“Oh, _fuck_ yeah!” I managed to get out. “This is _awesome!_ ”

“I know! Anyway, the erotic candies are about human-sized, so _their_ pleasure thresholds are a _lot_ higher than Sputnik’s, meaning they’re _perfect_ for having sex with!”

“Um…uh...okay, I guess. Have you...tested them?”

“Have _I_ fucked my girls? You _bet_ I have!” She blushed as red as her hair. “They’re really nice people, y’know?”

“Aren’t they your...daughters, though?”

“Technically, no,” Talika explained. “Their ‘parents’ are the rocks that the raw materials used to build the nanomites came from. Celia is less of a mother and more of a midwife.”

“And don’t worry about their ages! The test droids’ mental ages are all synced to mine,” Celia added hastily. “Oh, and we have dedicated test droids. Their programming is used as the bases for the actual products.”

I nodded. “So why me?”

“We need _someone_ nonbiased to test them before they get released! _Doy_.”

“That...actually makes sense. Who'm I going to meet today?”

“We’re just about ready to release the Candy Girl line to the public. All we need to do is have you test one of them and we’re good to go, and according to our test groups, the one they want to see first is our Chocolate model,” Talika said. I grimaced. “Something wrong?”

“I, uh...don’t like chocolate.”

Celia stared at me for a moment before breaking into a toothy grin. “Don’t worry, buddy! We have LOTSA options to choose from! And hey, you not liking chocolate’s actually a really good thing.”

“It is?”

“Yep! You’ll be able to suggest things that aren’t chocolate and therefore increase the diversity of what we offer!”

“Chocolate is _seriously_ overdone,” Talika agreed. “Besides, the girls _you’ll_ be testing aren’t actually _made_ of candy. That would be a waste of resources and you’d probably get sick after ingesting it anyway. The test droids are made completely out of nanomites, so while they’ll look and feel like their candied clones they won’t smell or taste like them. Not that eating something with the approximate consistency of crushed glass is particularly advisable anyway.”

“Ah,” I nodded. “Do they... _know_ what they’re being used for?”

“Course they know! All Bo Peep AIs are completely sapient!” Celia scoffed. “The candy versions don’t have free will is all; their only purpose is to get people off and they simply aren’t capable of thinking about anything else. The _test_ droids, on the other hand, _do_ have free will and _are_ allowed to do things that they actually like doing. For example, the girl you’ll be testing today likes to make statues of those weird Mexican animal thingies!”

“Alebrije,” Talika corrected. “Brightly-colored monsters,” she clarified on seeing my confused expression.

“An artsy type, huh? Sounds interesting. Can’t wait to meet her.”

“And you will in...now! Oh, and when you’re testing the girls, we have a...specific uniform for you to wear.”

Oh boy.

* * *

I sighed. The “uniform” was little more than black boxers and disembodied white cuffs with red trim, a white collar, and a red bowtie. “You look great, Andy!” Celia said from the lab. “Nice muscles!”

“Celia, stop sexualizing the guy,” Talika deadpanned. “Dispensing Test Droid 003-CHOK-1847. Coco, you’re on.” A tube came down from the ceiling and sprayed a gray cloud of nanomites onto the bed. The cloud took shape, going from a blob to something more humanoid. Its color changed from gray to brown. When it settled... _she_ was there.

Coco, as she was apparently called, was a brown-skinned woman with shoulder-length wavy white hair. The skin of her neck, the front & back of her legs from her shins downwards, her feet, and her lips were white. Her breasts were light yellow with dark brown nipples and her eyes were light yellow with dark brown scleras. There were tufts of white fur on her knees, wrists, and shoulders, and a yellow patch between her eyes on the bridge of her nose.

I got close to her and sniffed. “You don’t smell like anything,” I said, awed that for the first time in my life something chocolate _didn’t_ make me want to vomit.

“I hope not, I’m just a machine,” Coco mused. Her voice was deep and smooth. “Hey there, Andy. Am I...cute enough for you?”

“Definitely,” I said. “Can I touch your hair?” She nodded and I gently stroked her scalp with one hand while the other brushed the fur on her neck. “Wow...it’s soft.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, cheeks flushing brownish-black.

“And you seem really nice, too. Are you...ready?”

“I’m a sex robot, when am I not?” she chortled. “The question is...are _you_?”

I breathed in. “I am. It’s time to lose my virginity.” I stood up taller.

“Not so fast, guy,” Coco said, putting her hand up. “I’m only used to loving _women_ , and from what I’ve been told men need to rest up after they orgasm. I’m gonna keep things nice and slow so you don’t wear yourself out.”

“That’s fine, that’s perfectly fine!” I said quickly. “Any ideas for foreplay that you might have?”

She put her finger on her chin for a brief moment before grinning. “How about we start by giving my boobies a nice looksie?” She grabbed her tits and began playing with them. “You like that, dontcha?”

“Very,” I sighed as I got hard.

Coco smiled and released her boobs. “Get your dick out, but don’t take your underwear off.” I complied and slid it out through the hole. Coco purred. “Not bad at all.”

“You have experience with dicks?”

“Part of a community of shapeshifting robots, remember? Yours is the first _human_ dick I’ve encountered, though.”

“Yeah, sorry I’m average,” I grunted.

“Most girls care very little about the size of the dick, my good man,” she replied. “They care _more_ about how it’s used. And right now I _shall_ be using it. You like feet, do you not?”

I blushed. “Yeah...had a thing for them since I was a kid…”

“Well, luckily for you Celia _also_ happens to have that kink,” Coco said as she lay on her back. “A kink she has been so _kind_ as to share with _us_ .” She lifted her legs and wiggled her toes in my face. Her nails were somewhat long and were brown with darker tips; I didn’t know if they were meant to resemble either natural nailbeds or a pedicure. Either way, her feet, which were about a size ten, were _very_ sexy. “Go on. Give them a kiss or two.”

I inhaled deeply. No smell at all. I kissed the pad of her right foot; it tasted sort of plasticky and sort of...human? Whatever, it was good, and I savored every part of her feet. She enjoyed it, too, for she was moaning and groaning and her blush was spreading even further up her face.

“You did a good job, _amorcito_ ,” she cooed. “Let’s reward you for your good behavior.” She lowered her legs and gripped the base of my shaft with the first and second toes of her left foot and the tip with all five on her right. She rubbed the length and fondled the tip and my _candy gods_ it felt good.

“Initiate testing phase,” Talika said. “There are three features we’re going to test today, Coco. Are you ready?”

Coco removed her feet from my dick and sat up. “ _Si_.”

“Alright. Test one: hot fudge blowjob.”

Coco nodded. She got off the bed and knelt on the ground, grabbing my cock and hacking a warm and disturbingly brown loogie onto the tip. “Something wrong?” she asked when she was done.

“Don’t like chocolate,” I grimaced.

Coco nodded. “For you, I will change the color.” She shut her eyes and concentrated, and her spit turned a much more appetizing shade of white.

“You can do that?” I asked, surprised.

“We can ALL do that,” she replied. “Although Christine’s a lot better at it than the rest of us are.” She wrapped her hands around the base, shoved my rod into her mouth, and began bobbing her head up and down my length.

My breath hitched. A girl was sucking my cock! “Oh, that’s _nice_ ,” I groaned, grabbing the back of her head with my left hand and running my fingers through her hair as she worked.

“Young love is – _AHN!_ – so sweet!” I heard Celia groan. I looked across the room to see the window into the lab. Celia was bent over a table, dreamy-eyed, as Talika plowed into her with the strapon. Guess that’s why she was wearing it, then.

“And the test’s going quite well too,” Talika agreed. “Commence test two: caramel deposit.”

Coco released my dick and stood upright. “For the lactation fetishists I’m programmed to eject liquid caramel from my nipples.”

“Well, at any rate, I like the smell of caramel better than I like the smell of chocolate,” I groused. I grabbed her boobs and started massaging them. She groaned, her white-fleshed tongue hanging out of her mouth and her eyes wide with lustful awe. Slowly but surely I discovered that her nipples were collapsible, and that their full length was _much_ longer than nipples really should be. With a grunt, she sprayed a thick golden fluid all over me, coating my entire body in golden brown.

Coco laughed. “I knew you were sweet, but this is NOT what I meant by that!”

“How is this physically possible?” was all I could say. “Your boobs aren’t nearly big enough to hold all of this glop.”

“Never underestimate _mi quiera_ ,” was her reply as the golden fluid obediently migrated back inside her and her nipples retracted themselves.

“You’re doing great, Coco,” Talika said with approval. “Just one more test and we’re good to release you to the public.”

“And which test is that?”

  
“Organ autonomy.”

“Right, that one. Andrew, would you be so kind as to lie down?” I nodded and sat on the edge of the bed and lay on my back. Coco grabbed the edge of the bed next to me and began walking her legs backwards. With a sudden _CRACK!_ across her stomach, the top and bottom halves of her body separated. Coco released the bed and landed on her palms, while her disembodied hips jumped onto the bed.

I gulped. “I can do this…I can have sex with a girl…” I grabbed the hips and placed them over my crotch. They raised themselves, Coco’s vagina lining up with my cock...and then, in the moment of truth, sank themselves downwards, burying me deep inside of her. “Ohhhhh…”

“He did it!” Celia chirped. The hips began bouncing up and down, and I grabbed them, massaging the gluteals. Coco’s “flesh” was quite pliable and soft, like clay. Speaking of Coco, her upper half hand-walked to where I was standing and began licking my balls. “Good girl, Coco! Guys _like_ that kind of stuff!”

“They sure do,” I grunted.

After a few minutes of fucking this amazing girl, Coco grabbed my dick with her right hand and began massaging my base. Tan vaginal fluids covered it. Looking at me through the gap between our groins, Coco smiled at me. “Cum for me, my love. Cum! Do it! Inside of me!”

I grit my teeth and came inside her. “OHHHHH!” she groaned, her upper half flopping onto her back, her cheeks completely obsidian black by now. My semen began mixing with her own uterine fluids, making a milk and caramel-looking puddle on my crotch. With a jerk and a shudder, Coco disappeared, dematerializing into a cloud of nanomites that traveled up the depositor and out of sight.

“Ugh…” I groaned. I got up and saw Talika and Celia still at it. Talika was short enough that she was effectively piggybacking Celia, their fingers interlaced and the strapon buried into the older woman’s vagina. I stood up, walked over, and stared at them. “We done?”

“We’re done,” Talika confirmed. “Celia, _chukka_ , can you help me down?” Celia nodded eagerly and stood up, letting Talika land on her feet and pull out with a soft _plop_ barely audible behind the glass.

Celia turned around and kissed her girlfriend on the lips, soft and sensuously. “ _Oh_ ,” she said, blushing on breaking the kiss and noticing that I was watching them in awe, still more or less naked. “Your dick is...pretty.”

“Thanks?...Now what?” I asked as I entered the lab to get my clothes.

“You’re going to rest up, then you’re going to the taste-testing part of your job,” Talika explained. “You did well, Andy. Coco did too. I think we’re ready to release her model to the public.”

“Goody,” I said. “And speaking of goodies, it’s time to start tasting some candy!”

“You need _real_ food before you can do that, Andrew. Sex is hard work and we don’t want you passing out from hunger.”

“Right,” I nodded. “And I _am_ feeling a bit peckish. Where’s the cafeteria?”

* * *

I wolfed down the remnants of a particularly good sandwich. “Ahhhhhh.”

“Dude, _chew_ ,” Jeff grunted. “You’ll get reflux doing that.”

“Not me! The Mills have always had fast metabolisms and don’t tend to get stomach problems,” I replied. “Why do you think I can eat as much candy as I do and not have type one diabetes?”

“Pretty sure diabetes is a _pancreas_ issue.”

“Whatever! Same general principle. Heart health, too. Not that I _want_ to eat human-sized amounts of candy right now anyway.” I paused. “Do you–”

“Yes, we ALL know about Celia’s sentient sugar bombshells,” Jeff cut me off. “We employees have a non-disclosure agreement about them that’ll last until they go public. So I guess it’s ended now thanks to you. Yay.”

“Really?”

“Well, _yeah!_ These girls may be _mentally_ twenty-five but they’re still physically, like, four or five years old at the most. They’re not quite ready to deal with most people just yet.” He gave me a stern look. “And there are a lot of bad people out there who want the girls for their own reasons. Profit, something to rape that’s in the legal gray area of what a human is and what a human isn’t, the list goes on. We’ve actually been robbed _twice_ before you got hired.”

I paled. “...robbed? Twice?”

“Yep. We call ‘em the Lotus Onslaughts ‘cuz they specifically targeted Celia’s technology. Both of ‘em _really_ messed the girls up, financially _and_ mentally. It’s been a long time since stuff like that happened, but now that the girls are going public? Who knows?” He sighed. “Andrew, can you do me a favor and make sure they’re safe?”

  
I sat taller. “Yeah, I think I can.”

For the first time since I met him, Jeff smiled. _“Good.”_

* * *

“Second floor, Room 201,” I smiled, looking at the room where I’d been assigned to work. There was a nice, big table in the center, a counter with a sink and numerous plastic cups, a desk next to a charging station, and a spiral notebook. There was also a miniature refridgerator tucked away in the corner. It was painted a sterile, doctor’s office white, presumably to make stains easier to see.

I set my stuff down and plugged my laptop into the charging station. “Alright,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “Where do I begin?”

“With these.” I jumped as I saw Coco enter the room, carrying a small container of jellybeans. She was clothed this time, wearing a dark blue dress with pale blue stripes and highlights, a light purple shawl wrapped around her neck. A pair of black slip-on shoes with white soles graced her feet; she wasn’t wearing socks.

“Coco?”

“Yep!” she beamed. “We all have jobs when we’re not getting it on, and _I_ assist with quality control of the candy, particularly the new stuff. That way, if it starts tasting funny, we can catch it before a lot of it goes out to market.”

“Y’know, I’m curious. How _do_ you get your energy?”

“Lotus Nanomites are solar-powered,” she replied. “But test droids can break down organic material for the carbon we need for some of our components.”

“Ah. So I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, then?”

“ _Si_. My office is 202, so we’re practically neighbors.” She beamed.

“Well,” I chuckled, “it’s going to be nice getting to know you. So, what’s with the jellybeans?”

She set the container on the table. “We’ve recently begun making jellybeans with real fruit juice for flavor. Peep calls them Baby Beans.”

“After jelly babies, I suppose.”

“And these are the new Tropical Fruit flavors. Write down what you think, then send it to me. There’s a key in the bottom of the container.” She left my office. “Good luck!”

I opened the container and emptied it. Eight different colors. I picked up the accompanying card and studied it. Gold was pineapple, light orange was mango ( _also_ a seriously overdone flavor, in my honest opinion), white was coconut, light yellow was banana, fluorescent yellow was starfruit, greenish-brown was durian (how’d they get _that_ into the US?), red-orange was papaya, and brown was tamarind.

I picked up a pineapple-flavored jellybean and popped it into my mouth. Instantly, the sharp, sour taste of pineapple filled my mouth. It was so _authentic_ . “Okay, _this_ one gets a good review from me,” I said after I swallowed.

I paused. “Wait, I have no idea what some of these other fruits taste like.” Curious, I opened the refrigerator and found the fruits used to flavor the jellybeans.

“...huh, they’re really well-prepared."


	2. Prepare for Trouble and Make it Bubbles

_ September 22, 2023. Somewhere on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. _

Life settled into normalcy after that. Every day I would receive two small bags of candy and recorded what I thought about them. Because of my aforementioned dietary preferences, chocolate and peanut butter candies were  _ not _ to be sent to me. Luckily for me, Bo Peep sold many other things besides just that; they were  _ especially _ proud of their marshmallow kitsch. But other than the occasional report, life was kind of dull.

Well, most days were dull, at least. Today had been a lot more exciting than I’d bargained for.

* * *

It was early on a Friday morning when it started. I sighed as I absently doodled a new design for the bags that their saltwater taffy came in. I was going for a mermaid, but with a shark tail, as the product’s mascot when I heard someone knocking on the door to my office. “Yeah?” I set my pencil down and opened the door.

“Hi Andy!” Coco said. She was wearing a short-sleeved pink dress with dark floral patterns on the collar, white socks, and black-strapped Arizona Birkenstocks.

“Hey, Coco.” We embraced, and then kissed.

“Get a  _ room _ , dorks!”  _ That _ voice was new.

I broke the hug and turned around to see three other Candy Girls I hadn’t met before, looking at Coco and I with intrigue. The one who’d addressed us was light pink with various vertical white stripes, a small cowlick of plastic-looking hair hanging from the middle of her forehead and a coiled, flat ponytail in back, her blue-green eyes hidden behind a pair of brilliant white hornrim glasses. She wore a black jacket over a mint green shirt, the sleeves stopping at the wrist guards growing from behind each of her hands, and slender black pants with matching pumps and no socks. Her fingernails were colored a reddish-pink reminiscent of the color you’d find on bubblegum packaging (Coco had since told me that because of their bodies’ sand-like consistency the test droids couldn’t wear nail polish, or  _ any _ cosmetics for that matter, but they  _ could _ use their color-changing powers to make it  _ look _ like they were wearing the stuff).

The second new Candy Girl, whose eyebrows were raised inquisitively, was a slender green-skinned woman with white eyebrows, elbows, and kneecaps, a three-point mohawk slinking down between two ursine ears. Her flesh looked gelatinous and glistened in the bright fluorescent lights above us. Her cheeks were thin and narrow, her eyes the same shade of green as her skin, and her hips were positively  _ enormous _ ; each cheek was roughly twice the size of her own head. She wore a black crop top with powder blue booty shorts and white flats, again with no socks. Her fingernails were a vibrant, almost tacky orange, but it looked surprisingly good against the green skin of her fingers.

The third and final new Candy Girl was almost as tall as I was, her two-toned red-and-white hair cut short except for a single, long curved bang hanging over her left eye. Her skin was alabaster white with cherry red accents, her eyes a brilliant scarlet. Her red-skinned hands were surrounded by wrist guards that looked like they were made of gingerbread cookies; they were even outlined with white frosting and adorned with small green buttons. She wore a white t-shirt with black cargo shorts and matching flip-flops, her toenails colored the same black as her fingernails. 

“Uh...who are you?” I managed to get out.

“My girlfriends, who else?” Coco chuckled. “More specifically, Bubbles, Ursula, and Christine, three of many such lovely women.”

Bubbles, the pink one, grinned. “Nice to meet you, big guy!” She shot her hand from across the room until it stopped; her arm had stretched a good five feet. “ _ C’mon _ , man, don’t leave me hanging!” I timidly took her hand and shook it. “THERE we go. Celia picked a  _ good _ one, guys!” I let go, and she retracted her hand.

“Indeed she did!” Christine, the striped one, boomed. Her voice was deep and commanding, and her tongue was red-and-white striped too. “Andy, my good man, can you guess what sort of candies we take the forms of, hmmm?”

“You’re a candy cane, Bubbles is gum, and Ursula’s a gummy bear,” I replied confidently. They nodded in response, smiling at me having gotten it right. “It’s nice to meet you lovely ladies too. I guess you were ready to meet me?”

“We sure were!” Ursula, the green one, grinned, an undeniable bounce in her voice. “We were debating over whether or not we could trust you, but after nine days of Coco singing your praises, well, some of us just  _ had _ to see you for ourselves!”

Christine laughed heartily, her colored parts flickering, like a cuttlefish hypnotizing its prey, from red to orange to green to blue to pink and back to red again. “Quite right, Ursula! Well,” she said, calming down, “I suppose we should get back to our jobs.  _ We’re _ quite busy too, you know.”

“They are,” Coco affirmed. “Christine’s in advertising, Ursula manages the copy room, and Bubbles is in charge of meetings.”

“Gotta earn our keep  _ somehow _ ,” Bubbles shrugged. “And  _ speaking _ of keep, Andy, you’re doing testing today with Celia at two o’clock.”

“I am?”

“Yep!” She grinned a sly grin. “With  _ me! _ ” She sauntered over and planted a wet, chicle-flavored kiss on my lips, much to my surprise. “Welp, see ya later!” And the four girls left, giggling madly like they were teenagers.

I sighed. “Well, at least I won’t be bored anymore.”

* * *

That afternoon, I entered the lab. “Hey guys. Uh…what are you doing?”

“Hey Andy,” Celia said, not bothering to turn around. “Tal and I are having an epic staring contest, and  _ I _ wanna  _ win _ this time.”

Talika’s eyes were open, but her breathing was slow and drawn-out. “Celia, I think she’s asleep.”

Celia finally blinked. “You really think so?” She tapped Talika on the shoulder. “Tal?”

Talika jolted awake. “Guh! Sorry, Celia, I’ve been in meetings all  _ day _ . People have...concerns about the ethicality of selling sapient candy sculptures.” She groaned in annoyance as she rubbed her temples.

“Did you tell them Coco gave us her consent to do that?” I asked as I began changing into my “uniform”.

“I  _ did _ , but they won’t listen. I even offered to bring her in so she could tell them herself, but they  _ still _ refused.”

“Which is  _ completely _ fucked up!” Celia exclaimed. “I mean, the thing itself can address your concerns, but you  _ still _ don’t want to hear it out!  _ Unbelievable! _ ”

“For what it’s worth,  _ I _ see her as a person,” I said.

“I know  _ you _ do,” Talika smiled. “That’s why we picked you to be our tester. Now get in there so I can start the test.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I entered the testing room and sat on the bed. “Ready!”

“Dispensing Test Droid 004-BUBS-1848. Come on down, Bubbles.” A tube came down from the ceiling and sprayed a gray cloud of nanomites onto the bed. It changed color from gray to light pink, and Bubbles sat before me. Only now she was naked – even her glasses were gone – and I could see that her volptuous boobs were white with pink cross-shaped areolas, her nipples marked out in smaller white circles, and her shoulder joints featured pink, spherical bosses resembling gumballs.

“Hello again!” she chirped.

“Hello to you, too,” I said. “You’re ready for this, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am! I’ve been ready since Coco told me allllll about what you did with her.” She purred and shivered in delight, her cheeks flushing darker. “And  _ I _ want some of that love, too. So lay it on me!”

“I’ve only done Coco once,” I replied, trying to explain myself calmly and logically. “That’s not much foundation to build a relationship on. Do you...think we can date? To get to know each other better, I mean?”

“Well, not in public just yet. Can’t have us being, y’know, kidnapped by some thug. But you can come here and spend time with us. Soon, I mean.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but you’re going to have to wait a bit until we’re ready.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Well…” She suddenly lowered her voice to a whisper that sent tingles down my spine. What she wanted to say was obviously something close to her heart, something she didn’t want Celia and Talika eavesdropping on. “Let’s just say that you’re our  _ second _ tester.”

_ That _ surprised me. “Yeah, you’re not the first guy we’ve considered letting into our polycule,” Bubbles admitted. “But after the first tester...hurt us, we’ve  _ all _ been a little careful around strangers,  _ especially _ around unfamiliar men. If the first ten of us who have sex with you say that you’re okay, then we’ll  _ all _ date you.”

Was whatever the last guy did to them one of the things that happened during one of those Lotus Onslaughts that Jeff had mentioned last week? “I won’t let you down,” I said firmly. I couldn’t, not when there was so much at stake here. If I failed, these girls would never get to see the world.

“Great!” She stood up and turned around quickly so her white-skinned ass was facing me, her normal enthusiasm returning with gusto. “If  _ that _ ain’t big enough, I can make it  _ bigger! _ ” She began inflating her ass until each buttock was about the size of her head. “Like boobs? I can do that too!” She then began stretching and inflating her breasts until they matched her butt’s dimensions.

She then began squishing and fondling her breasts, her head turned and her left eye locked on me to make sure I knew she knew what she was doing. “The things I’d like to do to those boobs and that ass,” I drooled.

“What about that  _ pussy? _ ” She pushed me onto the bed and lay on top of me, her breasts pressing against my inner thighs and her crotch in my face. The inside of her vagina was blue-green just like her eyes, unlike the rest of her insides which all seemed to be salmon pink judging by the color of the inside of her mouth, which surprised me.

“Yeah, that works,” I breathed.

She giggled. “Your breath tickles. I like that.”

“Initiate testing phase. Test one: vaginal elasticity,” Talika droned from the control room, interrupting that thought. Right, my job. Showtime.

I pushed my head into Bubbles’ vagina and began nibbling on her vagina. It smelled far fresher than a vagina really should, and it was quite enticing. I was never one much for gum, the dissatisfaction of not being able to eat something you put in your mouth being too much for me, but I didn’t feel that way here.

At the same time, Bubbles had pulled my cock out of my underwear and was now sucking on it, her elastic cheeks and throat feeling nice and tight around my length. “Andrew, we can’t test her elasticity if you don’t chew on her harder,” Talika said somewhat sternly.

“Dun’t wurruh,” Bubbles said from my dick, her voice muffled by the warm piece of flesh in her mouth. “Uh luk ut.”

I shrugged. “If the lady wants it.” I took the back end of her perineum in my teeth and yanked it back. It didn’t tear or break, but the stretching and the texture and the taste made it feel like I was eating a balloon. Huh, so  _ that’s _ what balloons tasted like. I should’ve guessed, what with them both being made from latex after all.

As I suckled, I got creative and wiped my right index finger along the inside of her vagina, coating it in sticky pale green fluid, then shoved it into her ass and began anally fingering her. Was it clean in there?

“Fun fact!” Celia said from the control room, almost as if she was reading my mind. “Candy Girls can’t defecate! Any and all organic material that they might consume is either incorporated into their nanomites to repair damage or expelled as harmless waste gases!”

Bubbles hummed around my cock. Her anus was looser than the tight, circulation-cutting-off ring I’d expected it to be. Good, I didn’t want to lose the thing that I peed out of.  _ That _ would  _ suck _ , and  _ not _ in the good way.

“Test two: appendigial elasticity.”

Bubbles extricated herself from me and stood up. “How far are we goin’, Tal?”

“Twice your default length for arms and legs, ten times for nipples.” Six mechanical arms suddenly shot out of the walls, grabbing hold of Bubbles’ wrists, ankles, and nipples before stretching them all out until her arms were each about four feet long, her legs about five, and her nipples a full foot. Her nipples were long like Coco’s but were uniformly cylindrical and much thinner.

“Impressive,” I said.

“Pfft! This is nothin’. I can go up to  _ fifty _ feet before I’m at risk of tearing,” Bubbles scoffed. My jaw dropped at that admission. Fifty  _ feet?! Without tearing?!  _ **_Or any_ ** **lick** **_of concern for the laws of thermodynamics?!?!_ ** “I don’t care much for bondage, though, but at least this thing keeps me from tripping over myself when we fuck while my limbs are this long.”

“Safety first,” I quipped, still stunned by her absurdly high tensile strength. She laughed at my confusion. “You ready?” I stood behind her and lined up my dick with her vagina.

“Go for it!” she nodded, blushing an even darker shade of pink. That was enough permission from me. I shoved into her. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth. “ _ Ahhhhh _ ...I can see why Coco likes you so much.”

“What, besides my winning personality?”

“Well,  _ yeah! _ Your incredible dick!” She suddenly grew serious. “Not that that’s the  _ only _ reason I like you, you know. You’re a nice boy, Andy, and that will  _ always _ be a turn-on.” I smiled at her admission. The girls I knew growing up never would’ve said that to me...or to anyone but themselves, for that matter.

We continued to fuck for several minutes, Bubbles’ flesh turning warm and soft as we did. I could see her elbows and knees wobbling as she began to give out. “Good work, guys,” Talika said eventually, releasing the mechanical arms. Bubbles cracked her elbows, back, and knees as her arms, legs, and nipples resumed their usual lengths. “Test three: vertebral flexibility. Her internal temperature should have risen enough so that she can bend over far more than any human contortionist can.”

“You should see me in the summer,” Bubbles smirked. “I can eat  _ myself _ out if I’m warm enough.”

My face flushed and my cock sprung to its absolute full length. “You don’t say…”

She grinned lecherously. “Wanna see how close I can get today?” I nodded, stupefied. She lay down on the floor on her back, raising her legs in the air and wiggling her toes. The soles of her feet were white, and her toes were the same blue-green as her eyes and vagina. “Like my feet?”

“ _ Love _ your feet,” I breathed, taking a moment to kiss her soles and suckle her toes. Bubbles, like Coco, only tasted of plastic and human body odor, only she was noticeably sweatier.

“Careful not to get too much of my sweat,” Bubbles said, giggling under my touch. “Like real gum, I’m pretty sticky if I’m not careful about my secretions.”

“She can climb up walls like a frog or a gecko, it’s really cool!” Celia said from inside the lab. “Her secretions can also be made into glue!”

“We  _ don’t _ recommend that last bit, it smells absolutely  _ terrible _ after it’s been processed,” Talika remarked grimly.

“Bubbles, I’ve had fun with your mouth and your pussy, so there’s only one hole of yours that I have yet to fuck,” I said, indicating her rear. “Are you ready?”

“Aye aye, cap’n!” She grinned and saluted, blushing pure magenta. Candy  _ gods _ , what a cutie.

“Okay, here we go.” I pushed her hips closer to her face, the tops of her toes almost brushing the ground, her crotch less than a foot about her head. I spread my legs and walked over, her body completely between my thighs, then I pushed into her waiting anus.

Bubbles mewled in delight, her breasts shrinking as their mass was redistributed to her tongue, which she began running along the contours of her nipples. Her tongue was just long enough to reach the tip of her clitoris, which caused her to shudder even harder and her legs to quiver even harder as she orally flicked her own bean.

Her asshole suddenly clenched a little  _ too _ hard. “OW!”

Bubbles immediately released me and I pulled out. “Oh  _ shit, Andy! _ Did I hurt you?”

I winced, rubbing the base of my dick. An angry red circle was wrapped around my shaft. “A little bit. I think I might not be able to use this for a couple minutes until the swelling goes down.”

“Don’t feel too bad, Andy, that’s why we test this stuff,” Talika said calmly. “To make sure that no one gets hurt by the final product.”

“I wish I  _ hadn’t _ been hurt in the first place, but I guess you’re right.”

“Bubbles, can you turn down the maximum tightness of your anus to 50% its current value?” Celia asked.

“Yeah, I can do that.” Her asshole visibly loosened. “Now what?”

“Well, I can still pleasure your last hole even if I can’t quite fuck it right now,” I said. “You up for analingus?”

Bubbles blushed. “S-sure! I can do that.” She knelt on the floor and spread her buttocks.

“Okay, here goes,” I breathed. “Hope I don’t get sick from this.”

“Not to worry, we’re self-sanitizing,” she replied. I nodded. Kneeling on the floor, I pulled her butt to my face and stuck my tongue into the chicle pink sphincter (spinkter, heh heh heh). I began to slowly wiggle it around, licking the flesh within. She groaned, her normally white cheeks bright crimson at this point. You would  _ think _ she’d blush gray, but apparently not.  _ Whatever _ the color of her blush, she was enjoying the  _ crap _ out of this, as was I. It felt nice to be able to do something like this and not have to worry about getting sick.

“Get it, Andy!” Celia cheered from somewhere behind me. What was  _ with _ that woman? Not that I minded too much, but knowing wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Eventually, Bubbles couldn’t take it anymore and her form broke, turning back into nanomites that disappeared from the testing room. With her gone, there was nothing to hold me up, so I fell flat on my face. “Testing successful,” Talika said, seemingly unconcerned by my injury. “Celia, could you get Andy some ice?”

“Sure thing!” Celia chirped. “I can’t  _ wait _ to see that data!”

“Glad I could help,” I grumbled, feeling my right cheek beginning to bruise.

* * *

I held a plastic bag of ice cubes wrapped in paper towels to my face with another bag sitting on my lap. I was in a meeting room with some other people from BPCC. Celia and Talika were there too; apparently it was important for them to hear it as well as the rest of us.

“Now then,” Mr. Peep said, sternly and decisively. “It has come to my attention that some of you are concerned about the ethics of the Candy Girl line. I understand why you’re concerned perfectly: you want to know if selling sapient beings soley for the purpose of inciting pleasure is morally wrong. Why, the answer to that is quite simply  _ yes _ , it  _ is _ , and you are right to be concerned about the morality and legality of the Candy Girl line.

“But the Candy Girls that we are selling to the public are  _ not _ the same beings as the gynoids used to test their forms and functions. To demonstrate, I have sent for one of our first publicly-released models.” He pressed a button on his desk, and the door opened.

Almost immediately the bitter, earthy smell of chocolate entered the room, and I tried my best not to gag. Stepping inside the meeting room was a being that was the splitting image of Coco, but I could immediately tell that the robot standing before me wasn’t the same girl that I’d gotten to know over the past few days. Although its appearance was different, its legs dark brown instead of white and its hair less like soft, humanlike hair with individual strands and more like a solid block of white chocolate, it was the being’s eyes that told me that the Candy Girl wasn’t sentient. They looked hollow and empty, without that spark I’d seen in Coco’s eyes.

“Greetings,” the clone said, coolly and mechanically. “What can I do for you?”

“How are you doing today, miss?”

The clone froze, unable to answer, before finally replying with “Would you like me to hold you?”

“See? Not a very good conversation partner, now is she?” Mr. Peep sighed. “Send her back to my office, boys. I might need a...little something before I go home tonight.” He looked back at us while two handlers escorted the clone away. “They’re good at  _ physical _ affection but that’s about it. Our market for the Candy Girl line is people who want to be comforted  _ physically _ , not emotionally. ‘Course, you gotta let  _ them _ ask what you wanna do before you fuck them, that way we don’t have anyone deciding that rape is okay.

“And now, her structural donor.” This time, Coco opened the door herself before entering the room and shutting it behind her. The differences were clear to see: the way Coco walked and the look on her face showed that she truly had a consciousness of her own. “How are  _ you _ doing today, miss?”

“Pretty good, all things considered,” Coco said, shrugging nonchalantly. Some of the other people at the desk started murmuring in awe.

“It’s a nice day outside, isn’t it?”

“How would  _ I _ know? I’ve never gone out,” she smirked. “I hope that changes soon, though. Marsha’s been really antsy ever since we started officially testing, and  _ that’s _ saying something.” Off to the side, Celia and Talika chuckled knowingly. Inside joke, I guess. Was Marsha one of the other droids? Probably. And if her name was any indication, she was likely based on BPCC’s marshmallow kitsch. Or something.

“Don’t worry, we will in due time,” Mr. Peep laughed. “What do you think about your job?”

“Well, now I can say I’ve eaten myself both metaphorically  _ and _ literally,” she laughed. I blushed at her admonition. “How many people get to say  _ that? _ ”

“I was talking  _ more _ about your...sex life. Well, the sex life of your other bodies, I mean...I think.”

“Right, the clones,” Coco nodded. She turned to face the board and spoke with practiced eloquence. “I was created to help people who were feeling unwanted physically feel like there was hope for them in the long run. But at the same time, I didn’t want them to get an unrealistic view on love. That’s dangerous for your health, you know.” Talika and Celia nodded somberly. Why did they nod? I shrugged it off and decided that they’d probably just had a rough breakup or two before coming here. If I only knew then what I know now.

“Think of my clones as fleshlights. Sure, they have arms and legs and can speak and you can eat the evidence that they were ever there, but that’s basically all they are. They can’t do the complex thinking that you and I can do. They’re not only nonsentient, they don’t even  _ have _ much of a thought process other than ‘does this person want me to get them off, and if so, which limb or orifice do I use to do it with’?

“ _ I’m _ different, though, as are my many sisters. We can test candy and mechanics all you want, but for the Candy Girls to play nice with humans we need to be able to program their  _ psychology _ effectively. And that’s  _ exactly _ why the test droids, including myself, exist. We let you know how a Candy Girl will interact with a human in a wide variety of environmental settings. It’s not just how they have sex, but how they talk, how they make eye contact, how their body language works. We’re used to test all of that, the little things that can make knocking boots feel like so much  _ more _ than merely relieving tension.

“And I know what I’m doing, too. I  _ know _ people are going to be sticking various things into my clones, both attached to them and  _ not _ attached to them, but I’m okay with it. Because if it gives someone a little more confidence and something to eat, why the hell not? And although I cannot always speak for them, on this issue my sisters and I can agree, for they feel the  _ exact _ same way about it as I do.”

The board nodded. “Meeting adjourned,” Mr. Peep said, finally satisfied. The board got up and left, leaving just me, Coco, Mr. Peep, Celia, and Talika. “Excellent work, Coco.”

“I try my best,” Coco shrugged.

“Well, you did a really good job,” Talika said, walking over to her. “Now they won’t be bombarding me with stupid questions.” They embraced, and then they kissed.

“Awww!” Celia cooed.

“They  _ are _ quite cute together,” I smiled. “Anyway, I gotta go back to work. See you later, Celia.”

“Bye!”

* * *

It was five o’clock when my alarm dinged. “Okay, I guess that’s the end of  _ that _ ,” I said. I packed up my stuff, left my office, turned off the light, then closed the door and locked up. “What a day!” I sighed.

“You can say  _ that _ again, new guy!” agreed a tan-skinned woman with short, brownish-black hair as she approached me. She reached out her hand and I shook it. “Annabelle Abbington, I’m in R&D.”

“Hey, research buddies,” I grinned. “Y’know, I’ve seen you around before, I just didn’t figure out that you were in the same department as me.”

“Yep! We make ‘em, you eat ‘em! But  _ I _ mostly work in like, figuring out the most efficient way of packaging our products so that you don’t open the box and find that it’s already broken.”

“That certainly sounds important. People wouldn’t be very happy about finding a busted candy bar.”

“It’s one of the most unsung positions in this industry, designing packaging,” Annabelle sighed. She perked up again. “Well, we’re going to be working together for quite some time, Mr. Mills! Let me know if you have any ideas for packaging art, I just handle the shape and stuff.”

“Sure thing. See you later, Ms. Abbington.” Annabelle grinned and left for the elevator. “Now let’s see…”

I was a bit thirsty, so I headed for the nearest water fountain before I went to the elevators. As I drank, I felt footsteps behind me. That was odd. I normally didn’t  _ feel _ someone’s footsteps. Especially ones  _ that _ heavy.

Standing up, I turned around and my jaw dropped. A  _ massive _ Candy Girl was approaching me. She was at least eight feet tall with legs almost as long as Bubbles’ entire body. The woman’s skin was white; every now and then I caught a glimpse of an unfrosted patch from underneath the sleeves of her blood red t-shirt, revealing that her flesh was pale yellow and layered with white frosting in between. Her hips were covered by a large pair of loose indigo pants, a large pair of white sneakers covering her massive feet.

Her hair was cut into a modest bob that framed her face, bringing out her piercing golden yellow irises and accentuating her scowling yellow lips. One lock of hair next to her right cheek bore an s-shaped mark resembling a hairpin. Two small leaflike growths emerged from each elbow, a pair of three leaves in a stack emerging from behind her shoulders. Her fingers were yellow, the nails a nude, manila color similar to the flesh beneath the white upper layer of skin.

“Uh...hi?” I said nervously. “Have we...met?”

“No, we have not,” the woman answered coldly. Her British-accented voice was nearly a full octave deeper than Christine’s voice and radiated pure power. “My name is 012-WDDN-1882 ‘Diana’, created on October 19, 2018 in the form of a yellow layer cake with buttercream frosting.”

“So you’re a...wedding cake-themed droid?”

“Correct.” She leaned down to get a better look at me. “And  _ you _ , may I presume, are our new tester?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “Andrew Mills, but Celia calls me Andy.”

Diana hmphed. “She’s gotten attached already. That’s either encouraging or concerning.”

“Uhhhh...I think it’s encouraging?” I offered. She glared at me. “Shutting up, I’m shutting up now.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked, her eyes wandering over my body.

“Eight days. I honestly thought Coco told you all on the day of her test.”

“I didn’t have a chance to speak with her on the fourteenth. I work in customer service and there was quite a bit of work that I had to take home.” She frowned; I could understand how annoying some people could be. “I didn’t even know that we’d gotten a new tester until I saw Coco’s model appear on our website.”

“Yeah, Celia doesn’t strike me as the organized type,” I said.

“She isn’t.”

“So..why did you come here?” I asked. “You wanted to see me for yourself?”

“I did, although not for the reason that Bubbles, Christine, Coco, and Ursula visited you this morning.” She looked at me dead on. “Mr. Mills, I do not trust you. Our previous tester did something to one of my sisters that I cannot forgive him for, and I do not yet know whether you have similar intentions as him or are truly are kindhearted as I have been told you are. As one of the Original Ten, it is Mr. Peep’s wish that my model be released prior to the end of 2023.” She stood up to her full height. “You have until December thirty-first to prove that I can trust you. See to it that I never get a reason to  _ distrust _ you.”

“W-what will you do to me if I fail?” I gulped.

“That will depend on the severity of what causes me to lose any small amount of trust that I have given you.” She turned around and thundered off, disappearing back into the darkness from whence she came.

I shivered in fear. What should I do now?


	3. The Thrilling Adventures of Sabrina

_October 6, 2023. Somewhere on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania._

The head of finances, a stiff-looking redhead with a thick mustache and a pine green suit, cleared his throat. “As you’re all aware, October is the month when demand for candy reaches its yearly peak. No time of the year, not even Valentine’s Day, Easter, or Christmas match how many orders are made from stores.”

“Well, _yeah_ , Chuck, we _all_ know that,” grunted a guy with yellow-orange hair. “Known it since diapers. What makes THIS year any different?”

“You DO know that we’re now producing _living_ candy these days too, right?” asked a blonde woman who looked pretty uppity.

I sighed. “I think he knows, Ms. Starr. I mean, I’m here, in the room, aren’t I?”

“Right, of course. I keep forgetting you’re here, Mr. Mills,” Ms. Starr apologized.

“It’s okay, I’m still learning. Keep going, Mr. Werther.”

Mr. Werther nodded. “Thank you. As I was about to _say_ , Mr. York, with a significant amount of candy now being diverted to make the shells for the Lotus nanomites to inhabit, production of non-Candy Girl products has gone down in recent weeks…”

As Mr. Werther droned on, I sighed. This was important, but I just couldn’t pay attention. Diana’s warning had stuck with me for the last...zounds, it’d been nearly two weeks by now. That woman had an aura on her.

I had no desire to hurt the girls, but I was under a lot of pressure to perform. Halloween was coming, and that meant making sure the candy was up to par and then making sure it stayed there. The monotony was really getting to me, and so was my fear. Could I really get the company’s full approval before New Year’s?

* * *

Sometime later, I sighed as I looked at the pile of rainbow-striped sugar on my desk. “Candy corn. It had to be candy corn.”

“What’s wrong?” I looked up to see Talika enter the room. “I thought you didn’t mind it.”

“No, I don’t. It’s just...this is the fifth batch I’ve tested today. I’ve been testing candy corn all day, every day, since the month began.”

“I see,” Talika grimaced. “I know candy corn is our best-selling product in October, but that’s frankly excessive. Do the other testers have this problem?”

“I don’t know. I think so, though, because I remember someone saying that because we have _so many_ products it’s more efficient for one guy to test one kind during demanding months like this one. Don’t know if it's true or not, though.” I sighed. “But what I wouldn’t do for a gummy worm right now.”

“I believe I can help you with that.” Talika reached into her pants pocket and retrieved a packet of bright red gummy worms: Bo Peep’s Blood Worms! (They were really cherry.) “I found this bag on my desk this morning; I believe one of my male coworkers is trying to flirt with me.”

“The one who you don’t like with the weird hat?”

“Yes, him. I figured it’d be better-spent on a man I _do_ actually like.” She dropped it on my desk.

“Really? Thanks, Tal, you’re the best,” I said, ripping it open and stuffing the first worm I could grab into my mouth.

“Actually, I believe _you_ are. After all, you’ve been such a big help to the Candy Girls already.” She smiled. “Without your help, Coco and Bubbles might never have been released to the public for quite some time.”

“Speaking of the girls, am I due for a test?” I asked.

“No...although, if you’re still tired and bored, I could ask Celia to schedule you one. It would probably be a good idea to release some new models this month anyway.”

“You don’t have to, but...I’d like that.”

Whether I _deserved_ it was another thing.

* * *

That afternoon, Celia called me down. “Andy! Hey! I heard you were tired of candy corn, so I scheduled you for a test!”

“Alrighty, thanks a bunch, Celia.” I got into my uniform. “Who am I meeting today?”

“Sabrina!” Celia’s eyes widened when she finished her sentence and she facepalmed. “Oh, why am I so fucking _stupid?!_ ”

“Celia, you’re not stupid.”

“But I am! You’re tired of candy corn, and Sabrina _is_ candy corn!”

“Well, I thought she was a robot,” I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal, Celia. Regardless of the theme, I’m sure I’ll like her.”

Celia sighed. “That’s a relief if I ever heard one.”

“Darling, please don’t fret. You know Andy isn’t that kind of perfectionist,” Talika said as she entered the room. She looked at me. “What?”

“Nothing, I just...wasn’t expecting you to not have your pants on,” I said, staring at her naked bottom. She wasn’t wearing her panties and strap-on, and I could see her soft, shaven pussy.

“I see.” She suddenly grinned. “Like what you see, Andy?” She bent over and wiggled her butt at me.

I got hard almost immediately. “U-uh-eh-uh-uh–”

“I’ll take that as a yes. You’re quite handsome too, by the way.” Talika stood up and gently escorted me into the testing room. As I tried to collect my wits, Talika closed the door behind me. “Dispensing 005-CORN-1898. Show yourself, Sabrina.”

A cloud of nanomites flew in from the ceiling, turning yellow before adding bands of orange and white. When it settled, a small girl sat on the bed, her feet drawn under her massive butt. She was quite bottom-heavy, her breasts small and her chest narrow while her hips were wide and plump. Her arms and legs were orange, turning to yellow abruptly at the lower forearms and mid-calves, her hands reddish-orange and the bottoms of her feet a lighter shade. A band of pale yellow covered her breasts like a tube top and over her face like a mask, stopping above her cute little nose. Her areolae were orange, as were her eyebrows and hair, two small horns resembling candy corns adorning each temple. Each elbow bore an orange spike, and the yellow parts of her forearms flared out into living cuffs protecting her wrists. Her eyelashes and fingernails were white, her toenails dark blue, and her eyes were a striking neon green with black scleras.

“Hey there, hot stuff,” Sabrina grinned with an adventurous look on her face, licking her lips lewdly. Her tongue was also orange, it turned out. “I’m Sabrina, the corniest girl this side of the Delaware!”

“Hello, Sabrina,” I said. “Are you ready to do this?”

“Yep!” She stood up on the bed and turned around so that her back was facing me as she stretched. “Oh! Man, I’m so stiff. Wanna help?” She turned her head around and cocked it to the side, briefly using her powers to jiggle her butt by itself.

“I’d like that.”

Sabrina grinned and hopped off the bed before bending over. “I normally don’t like bending over backwards, but for you I’ll make an exception.”

“You sure like to joke, don’t you?” I asked as I looked at her orange pussy. “May I?”

“Sure, go ahead, I _love_ getting fingered!” I slowly spread her labia and looked inside of it. She had a really nice vagina, so I got on my legs and gave it a kiss, which turned into a few licks, and then I was eating her out.

“Commencing test one,” Talika said. “Flexibility and stability.”

“Okay Tal, you’re the boss,” Sabrina got up and saluted at her girlfriend.

I stood up too. “What did you have in mind?”

“Self-worship!” Celia said excitedly. “While you fuck her!”

“Oooh, I don’t remember the last time I did that,” Sabrina blushed gold. “I think the last time I did foot stuff was when I licked Joy’s feet when she got home from work, and I think that was in August.”

“Joy?” I asked.

“The pancake girl who works in the company archives,” Sabrina explained. “She’s the newest, actually. I think Celia made her not long before you showed up, Andy.”

“How many of you are there, actually?” I asked as I put my hands on her shoulders. “Also, what leg did you want up first?”

“Right.”

I lifted her right leg up so her foot was at mouth level, then twisted her body so that I would penetrate her sideways. I slowly shoved into her, groaning at how she felt. “Do you like that?”

“I do, thank you.” She put her right hand on my left bicep, and I put _my_ right hand on the back of her corresponding thigh. Sabrina brought her foot to her face and began to lick at her sole, running her tongue up and down the pad of her foot before sucking on her toes. “You want a taste too?” I nodded and took to licking the other side of her foot, slowly running my tongue along the tops of her toes.

Eventually, her own tongue joined mine, and we made out through her toes before Sabrina moved it away. “I wanna switch legs now,” she said, and we did.

“Back to my earlier question,” I said as we kissed and suckled on her left foot. “How many of you are there? I’d like to get to know you guys better, but I haven’t gotten around to asking about you.”

“I wanted to get to know you too!” Sabrina exclaimed before swiping her tongue across her pinky toe. “Oh, I have some _really_ tasty feet.”

“You just figured that out?” I asked.

“Ha! I like you, Andy.”

“Test two,” Talika interrupted. “Softness. Andy, we’d like you to fondle her butt while she blows you.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a good gag reflex,” Sabrina said as I pulled out of her and sat down.

“Well, yeah, you don’t _need_ to breathe, so why would you have a gag reflex in the first place?” I asked as Sabrina bent over.

“Realism!” Celia exclaimed from the testing room. “People won’t buy a Candy Girl if she’s too far down the uncanny valley!”

“Oh, I see.” That made sense, frankly. The girls were quite human, but it was still easy to tell that they were robots. Sabrina’s eyes were kinda freaky, though. In a good way.

Sabrina grinned. “You have pretty cute feet too, y’know.” She shuffled until the tips of her toes were touching the soles of my feet. It felt exhilarating and exciting. “Anyway, where was I?” She grabbed my dick and began to stroke it with both hands.

I grabbed her butt and began to gently squeeze it. Some parts of Sabrina appeared to be hard, namely the orange portions of her arms and legs, but the white part was quite soft while the yellow part felt like normal flesh. I suppose that was meant to make her resemble candy corn; the stuff looks harder to chew than it really is. “I’ve heard about something called the ‘original ten’. Are those the first droids made?”

“We sure are!” Sabrina said before licking the tip. “Oh, your penis is just as tasty as your tongue! But let’s not get too cocky, shall we?” I chuckled and she continued speaking, alternating between explaining and sucking.

“Let’s see...first is Coco, then Bubbles, then me, you’ve all met us. [slurp] Then there’s Stella, she’s based on coffee candies. [gulp]”

“I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“Me either. Anyway, then there’s Fairy and Fluffy, they’re the cotton candy twins. [suckle] They were meant to be one AI but something went weird and they ended up with two bodies and slightly different minds. [lick] After that are Ursula and Christine, you’ve also met them [schloop], and then there’s Lilith, she’s cinnamon candy. [deepthroat]”

I gasped as Sabrina took my entire length into her mouth, sucking it expertly, her tongue hitting all the right spots. “Oh...and is Diana the last one?”

“Yep! You got it!” Sabrina said when she finally took me out of her beautiful oral cavity.

“Wait, hold on, you met Diana?” Celia asked.

“Yeah, I...ran into her at the end of the day I tested Bubbles on,” I said timidly.

“Oh, huh. What next?”

“Test three is next, darling, and now you’ll see why I didn’t wear my pants, Andy.” Talika entered the room, carrying her strap-on panties. I noticed her unlatch something, then the dildo adorning it dropped to the ground. “The third test is double penetration. Sabrina, I want you to put the dildo into your anus, then Andy shall give you vaginal sex again.”

“Man, I’ve heard of sticks up my ass, but this is ridiculous,” Sabrina quipped. “Wait, why aren’t you joining us? I bet Andy would _love_ to kiss that pretty pussy of yours.”

“I believe you, and I would like that as well, but I scheduled this test on very brief notice and I have to be elsewhere by 2:45.”

“Oh, I see. Can Andy kiss your pussy anyway?” Sabrina asked.

Surprised, Talika blushed, but nodded. While Sabrina spread her buttocks and pushed the dildo into her vagina, the human woman walked towards me. Still sitting, I looked up at her, and she nodded. I quickly leaned forward and kissed her vagina, briefly reveling in the way her warm, soft skin felt on my face, before Talika marched away.

Celia watched her girlfriend, by now as red as the scientist’s hair, reenter the observation room. “Tell me your secrets on making Tal blushy!” she said at last.

“I will. Okay, Sabrina, is your butt ready?”

“In the air and ready for action!” Sabrina confirmed, wiggling her raised crotch. I walked over, my front facing her right side, her feet on either side of her head and planted firmly on the ground. I slowly lowered myself until I felt my dick push into her again.

“Okay, Sabrina, who are your other girlfriends?” I asked, still curious. “Ohhhh…”

“Well, after Diana was made, then came Ruth, she’s cookie dough and super shy. Then Cyrus, the jawbreaker, who’s basically the exact opposite. Salem’s a lemon drop, she’s even tinier than me, and Marsha’s a s’more.”

“I _thought_ she might be marshmallow-themed,” I said as I kept squatting into Sabrina’s pussy.

Her tongue lolled out. “Oh, Andy, I think I might love you! Anyway, _ohhhh_ don’t stop, then there’s Honey, I think she’s a cough drop? And then there’s Kagami, the mochi girl, she’s a bit skittish. Caomei’s a cheesecake, she gives the _best_ massages and she likes foot stuff as much as I do. Matter of fact…” Sabrina moved her head closer to her left foot until she was able to lick it, then turned her head so she could do the same to her right foot. “Where was I?”

“Cheesecake.”

“Oh, right, right. Next is Karen, she’s a yellow cake like Diana but I think she’s meant for a different occasion, birthdays I think? Amanda’s neapolitan ice cream, she gets a lot of headaches, and Kanna’s a cinnamon roll, she’s really sweet and nice. After that came Weetamoo, she’s a pumpkin pie, doesn’t get out much, and that’s saying something. We have Mary, the banana pudding, and Lady, the velvet cake who doesn’t say much, and Eliza the muffin girl who always has something to say.” She sighed. “Andy, keep fucking me!”

“That’s the plan! Man, for such a small girl your pleasure threshold is _high_.”

“Experience, buddy. After Eliza we made Poppy, she’s a milkshake, super smol, super cute, super sleepy too. Grace is cookies and cream ice cream, we have to be careful ‘cuz her candy versions make people comatose if she herself doesn’t get enough sleep. And then there’s Joy, and that’s it for now.”

I shuddered. “Oh, just thinking about all those lovely, beautiful girls...and you, Sabrina, are one of those beautiful girls…” I finally came, unable to take it anymore.

Sabrina giggled as she lowered her legs, squeezing her nipples in delight. “Man, Andy, you sure know how to make a girl happy,” she giggled before her form broke.

* * *

“That was a very good test, Andy,” Talika said. “Now, I must be off, I need to meet with Mr. Werther to discuss sales. Celia, can you send the test results to Mr. Peep?”

“Sure thing, babe!” Celia kissed her, then the smaller woman left. “Hey, Andy? Thanks for makin’ Tal feel appreciated.”

“It was nothing. A guy who can’t give a girl oral isn’t much of a guy at all,” I replied as I started changing back into my clothes.

“No, really, it was a lot! You _get_ Tal, like _I_ get Tal, know what I’m saying? There are other guys who like her just ‘cuz she’s cute, but you understand her.”

I finished buttoning my shirt. “You think so?”

“I’m not good at that kinda stuff, but yeah, I do. I think we made a good choice taking you on. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was an awkward pause. “Andy?”

“Hm?”

“Can I...kiss you? Everyone else had fun kissing you…”

I blushed. “Uh...sure, Celia. I’d be happy to kiss you.” I walked over to her and leaned up, she leaned down, and our lips met. It felt really good. “You’re welcome,” I offered when I broke the kiss and walked away, the redhead too stunned to say anything.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

* * *

“Andy! There you are,” Mr. Peep said the moment I got off the elevator. “Where the Dickens have you been?”

“Testing,” I replied. “The droids, testing the droids.”

“Ah, I see. I wish I’d been given more notice, but oh well. Who’s been tested?”

“Sabrina.”

Mr. Peep’s eyebrows raised. “Sabrina? Candy Corn Girl Sabrina?! But that model isn’t ready to go to the public!”

“What do you mean? She seemed ready to me.”

“Mr. Peep, have you been keeping up with my files?” Sabrina herself came out of another elevator. She was now clothed, wearing a dark blue t-shirt with a white stripe on the middle and a pair of white cargo shorts. She was, however, barefoot, and her toes wiggled and scrunched as she talked. I tried to do my best to steel my gaze at my boss and not at Sabrina’s lovely feet.

“Keeping current?”

“I haven’t had that feature for three _years_ , Mr. Peep. Celia took it out because she couldn’t program it right, remember?”

Mr. Peep’s eyes widened. “Oh, of course! Sorry about that, Andy, I must’ve forgotten about that. Well, Sabrina, if you feel ready to go to the public, then I’ll allow that!”

“Thanks, Mr. Peep!”

“And, as a special reward, _you_ get to pick out which of your color variations get released first alongside your default!” Sabrina’s eyes widened in horror, but the man paid no notice. “Happy Friday!”

* * *

As soon as we got to my office, I said “I’m lost here, what was this about something being taken out?”

Sabrina sighed. “My model was meant to have a Halloween gimmick. Once the adult who bought me made me hit threshold, I was supposed to break into 256 mini-mes a few inches tall. Then they could give the mini-mes to trick-or-treaters.”

“That sounds like a lawsuit or two in the making,” I grimaced.

“Well, not really. The mini-mes wouldn’t be detailed enough to have like, nipples or genitals or a butthole, so they’d be kid-friendly,” she replied. “Besides, the smaller a Lotus Nanomite Construct gets, the lower its threshold. The kids were supposed to make the mini-mes hit it by telling them bad jokes, and once they hit threshold they were supposed to turn into little piles of regular old candy corn.”

“So THAT’S why you like puns so much.”

She giggled. “Yep! I like mystery novels too, Miss Marple is a national treasure! _Whose_ I’m not quite sure yet.” I chuckled too.

Then she sighed sadly. “But...the feature always ended up having some sort of bug because of how complicated the code for it was. Celia and Talika never got it to work quite right, so it was taken out of me entirely in 2020. It was decided that it was just too dangerous to expose little kids to, y’know?”

“Right, of course. So I guess now parents have to turn a full-sized you into a pile of candy corn and then distribute that to kids?”

“I guess. I mean, just one of my clones is like, enough candy to feed an entire neighborhood of ravenous five-year-olds on Halloween. Anyway, colors!”

“I have some suggestions, if you wouldn’t mind them,” I said, opening the file cabinet in my desk and retrieving something. “Here, here’s a list of the five most popular candy corn colors last year based on purchase count. Number one is your default, of course, but can you try the other four?”

She grabbed the list and read it before nodding. “Sure! I’m not as good as Christine, but I like to think that I can color people impressed. Mostly me.” She laughed as her colors changed, the yellow parts of her body turning a light brown color and the orange parts darkening a bit. “Ta-da! Harvest corn!”

“Chocolate-flavored bits?” I asked, pointing to the brown parts.

“Not us! The brown stuff is apple-flavored.” Goody, something I could actually tolerate.

“Alright, now for pumpkins.” Her colors shifted some more, turning a uniform soft orange color while her hair turned green. Her body shifted too, the spikes on her arms rounding and her torso expanding. “Here’s a candy pumpkin!”

“Okay, so far so good. I think blackberry cobbler’s next?”

“You think correctly!” Her shape resumed its normal contours, then the yellow bits changed to black and the orange bits changed to a bright purple color. “I think this is a good look for me, don’t you?”

“Of course, because you’re beautiful.”

Sabrina flushed a darker shade of black. “W-well...uh, what’s next?”

“Our final top five is Freedom Corn.” I blinked. “Wow, that sounds tacky.”

“It doesn’t even _look_ like the American flag,” Sabrina scoffed as her colors changed again, the black turning azure, the purple turning white, and the white bits left initially unchanged now turning red. “It looks like the Dutch flag upside-down. Or the Pan-Slavic flag rightside-up.”

“Well, I think we’ve got a good initial release line-up for you. Tell Mr. Peep that we should release the first four now and wait until Veteran’s Day to release the Freedom Corn. Ask him if he wants some other variations too for Christmas.”

“Good ideas, my man! Boy, if this is how testing’s gonna be from now on, I am _sold_. Literally!”

I sighed sadly. Sabrina had inadvertently reminded me of Diana’s warning. _“As one of the Original Ten, it is Mr. Peep’s wish that my model be released prior to the end of 2023. You have until December thirty-first to prove that I can trust you. See to it that I never get a reason to_ distrust _you.”_

“Andy? Helloooo? You in there?”

I startled awake. “Sabrina! Sorry, I was just...thinking. You know how I said I met Diana? Well...she told me not to hurt you guys. And she was…”

Sabrina made a face. “That sounds about right for her, the grump.”

“I just...why doesn’t she trust me? I mean, I know something about the first tester had to do with it…”

Sabrina sighed. “He did. Diana’s never been good at trusting people that she doesn’t know, but the first tester seemed like such a nice and honest guy that she couldn’t help but fall. We all fell for him, I know I did, but she fell the hardest by far. She just...she felt like she had a lot in common with him.

“And then something happened. I don’t feel comfortable telling you all of it now, but I’ll give you a basic rundown. Our first tester...betrayed us when a second attempt to steal Celia’s research was made one cold night in March 2020, an attempt that was somewhat successful because he sold us out, almost literally in that case.

“Even though we managed to recover our stolen data in time, the Second Lotus Onslaught still hurt us. Well, except for Weetamoo because she was only two weeks old at the time, and the girls made after her don’t know too much about it at all ‘cuz they weren’t there at all. But the rest of us...only one of us was hit harder than Diana. Poor thing wouldn’t leave her room for a week she was so depressed.

“It’s been three years now, and she hasn’t forgotten, _can’t_ forget because robots are blursed with a perfect photographic memory.” She sighed and looked out the window of my office. “But give her time and space, and I think she’ll warm up to you. Just...promise us that you won’t betray us.”

“I promised Jeff that I’d protect you girls,” I said firmly. “And I mean it.” I paused. “Also, did you say ‘blursed’ earlier?”

Sabrina laughed. “It’s the right word. Our photographic memories are both a blessing, because we remember the good times exactly as they happened, and a curse, because we remember the bad times just as well.” She sighed. “Should we go to Mr. Peep?”

“We should indeed. But first...”

* * *

“Wonderful!” Mr. Peep said when I showed him the photographs I’d taken of Sabrina’s variants. “Send those to the factory at once, Mr. Mills! I can’t wait to see them in real life!”

“And fuck them,” Sabrina smirked.

“You know me well, Sabrina. You are free to go.” Sabrina grinned before kissing me on the cheek and bounding away. “Mr. Mills, do you have any questions?”

“Just one. Can I get some variety in what I have to taste-test next week? I’m kinda worn out from doing all this candy-corn eating.”

“And _what_ , pray tell, would the benefits of that be?” Mr. Peep asked, curious.

“Well, you’d increase your sample size of opinions on your candies, for one. And a larger sample size is a better indicator of the true nature of something than a smaller one is.”

Mr. Peep nodded. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Mills. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.” He clapped his hands together. “Excellent! I’ll shake up the roster immediately! You still have your restriction about chocolate and peanut butter candies, right?”

“I do, sir.”

“Then I’ll put you on taffy next Monday, and the fruit chews on Tuesday, and the lollipops on Wednesday…” He silently squeed in delight. “Oh, this is going to be wonderful, Mr. Mills! Thank you so much!”

I smiled nervously. “It’s not much, Mr. Peep.”

“Oh, but an outsider’s perspective is always welcome in my book, Mr. Mills! Why, hiring you might be the best idea we’ve ever had!”

My jaw dropped. “R-really?”

“Of course! You’re being such a great help to us and you haven’t even been here for one whole month. I just cannot _wait_ to see what changes happen due to your presence in the coming years!”

“Y-yeah...that’s gonna be something.”

“Glad to hear it!” Mr. Peep beamed, completely oblivious to my inner turmoil.

* * *

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Everyone seemed so certain I could do great things...but Diana’s warning still sounded loud and clear in my head. _“As one of the Original Ten, it is Mr. Peep’s wish that my model be released prior to the end of 2023. You have until December thirty-first to prove that I can trust you. See to it that I never get a reason to_ distrust _you.”_

Who was right?

Who was right?

Who was right?

Who...was...right?


End file.
